SEO is DOA. Or is it? When people in the internet marketing industry utter the word, “SEO”, they often mean different things. I will attempt to break this down into two facets and lay out the reasoning behind why one facet is obsolete, while the other is as important today as it ever has been. SEO, which is short for “Search Engine Optimization”, often means the act of trying to out-guess the search engines (specifically Google and the lesser-used Bing) and get web sites that don’t necessarily belong on the first page of the search engine results on the first page. Often, “SEO Pros” will claim that they can get your web site ranked #1 for a given search term. (It’s easy – if you let them choose the keyword.) In this attempt, people go through various machinations and artificial link-building rituals and procedures. The idea is that if you find some “loophole” in Google’s algorithm that you can game the system such that you get ranked higher than you normally would. Obvious and over-used tactics include building multiple profiles in social media and other “web 2.0” properties and linking back to the “money site” from them, building backlinks from 3rd-party blogs, and writing press releases “optimized for SEO” and then distributing them over dozens if not hundreds of PR outlets. It’s crazy, expensive, stupid, and mostly ineffective. This form of “SEO” is almost completely worthless. Don’t do it. However, if you think in the following terms, SEO is completely relevant, effective, and smart. Don’t think in terms of gaming the system. Think, rather, in terms of setting up your site so that you make it super-easy not only for the search engines to find, index, and rank it, but also make to easy for real live people to find your content, share it with others, and interact with you about it. When you start thinking in these terms, SEO takes on a completely different meaning. You are, in fact, optimizing your site for the search engines, which speaks to the truer meaning of the words than making your site look better than it really is. So, here’s a simple prescription for performing sound SEO for your site: Write excellent content Share it with others Make it easy to share Interact with your audience Those are broad concepts. You have a lot of flexibility in applying them. For example, “share it with others” may mean emailing influential bloggers in your niche and asking them to review a post on your site, it could mean advertising in a newsletter, or it may mean mentioning a specific post on social media like Facebook and Twitter. It could mean all of the above. Go for it – leverage the vast resources that are currently available and get your top quality out there in the “blogosphere”. The “art” of gaming the search engines is over. That definition of SEO is obsolete. Instead, SEO means making your site awesome.

There are two big critical components of a sound search engine optimization (SEO) plan: You need your website and its pages and posts to be solid in terms of “onpage” factors like content, titles, tags, categories, etc. You need to have a lot of people talking about you and your content. That’s it. Sounds too simple, right? Well, when you think about just how much goes into SEO and the hundreds of factors that Google takes into account just for the 2 items above, it doesn’t sound so simple, does it? It’s really a mindset thing, actually. You can mired in the details, or just go for it! Once you get #1 down to a habit, move on to #2. But think about hiring somebody to do your offpage SEO stuff. It, too, is fairly simple, but you may not have enough hours in the day, or you may have more money than time. Either way, hire a competent pro. Onward! What is “Onpage SEO” and how do you do “it?” Onpage SEO Onpage SEO consists primarily of 10 things: Content, including compelling calls to action Headline Meta description, including Google Authorship Tags & Categories Images with proper alt text and/or video with good meta data URL / permalink Text style (yes, we’ll get to this) Linking External sharing, mentions, or linking encouragement, aka “engagement” – some SEOs may consider this “offpage,” but there is a distinction Site load time We won’t hit each of the above in any great detail, but we will cover them briefly below. Website Content “They” say “content is king,” and “they” are right. You must write compelling content that is relevant, timely, and engaging. And all that content you write must lead your reader to taking an action. Headline Your headline is what gets people to read your content. It’s also the title of your post when it displays in search engines. Do this wrong–and nobody will ever read what you publish. Do this right and you’ll never have a problem with readership. Meta Description This is most likely the most overlooked element in all of onpage SEO. Your meta description is that tiny blurb underneath your post title on the search engine results pages (SERPs). That little bit of text often is what gets a searcher to visit your page from Google. Add in the thumbnail of your profile picture in Google+ and you’ve got an even more powerful reason for searchers to click on your link, rather than somebody else’s. Tags & Categories If you use a “blogging” platform like WordPress (highly recommended, by the way), then you will want to make full use of tags and categories. Align your categories with your 5-10 primary keywords that your website is all about and use tags for more detailed searches. Often, tags and categories pages get ranked in Google a lot faster than individual pages. And it makes sense–your category page for “bass fishing” contains all of your posts about bass fishing, so it’s already on […]

Take a gander at the newly-updated “Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors” from Search Engine Land. Great stuff! Click the picture for an expanded view. The Periodic Table Of SEO Success Factors, used with permission

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a critical element you must consider when building a website that you want to rank in the search engines (why wouldn’t you?). Optimizing both your onpage and offpage elements is something you simply must do in today’s ultra competitive environment. As more and more websites go live, you are facing ever-increasing competition for that coveted Google #1 spot. Your competition is doing SEO. If you want not only to survive but thrive after the Google Panda, Penguin, and other P-word updates, you need to follow the current and emerging SEO trends. You will find the latest news about SEO and other internet marketing topics right here on Billetins.